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Every iOS owner is faced with an important, life-altering decision: to jailbreak their device or not. If you’re not a fan of spending a ton of cumulative money on relatively inexpensive app purchases, you might want to turn to piracy; however, you can’t get pirated apps without jailbreaking your device and relinquishing any of Apple’s official features. Thanks to a Chinese piracy site, though, you can now obtain pirated apps on your device without needing to jailbreak.

Jailbreaking an iOS device isn’t difficult nowadays; it just requires you to click the mouse a few times and then find something to do while it installs. Current jailbreaks are relatively safe as well — if your device accidentally powers down during the installation process, nothing is harmed, and you don’t become the new owner of a fancy brick. The biggest downside to jailbreaking an Apple device is you regularly need to avoid updates — and thus, new features — because most major updates quash a previous jailbreak. Also, jailbreaking technically breaks Apple’s warranty, and when something goes wrong with your phone, you can’t dump it at the Genius Bar then go get a coffee while the technician fixes it. What makes the risk of jailbreaking a device worth it, though, is that you can pirate apps for your device, as well as run homebrew software. However, if you can bring yourself to trust a Chinese piracy site, you can now get those pirated apps for your iOS device without having to tactfully avoid any core updates by going through with a jailbreak.

The site, 7659.com, gets around the need for jailbreaking by cleverly working within the rules of Apple’s own bulk enterprise license. Once obtained, the license allows companies to sign apps, then send those apps to their own employees without having to deal with the official App Store. This can be used, for instance, for app development purposes. What Kuaiyong, the company behind 7659, appears to be doing is obtaining apps in whatever way (either a cracked or purchased version, which is unclear), then signing them with the enterprise license signature. Rather than distributing the apps solely to employees, the signed apps are made available on 7659 for anyone to download.

Now, Apple doesn’t want you to use this loophole in such a way. Apple’s own explainer on distributing enterprise apps states that a company should limit access to the distribution signature, which means the company is aware it can be used in the way Kuaiyong is. The likely reason you don’t see a US site doing the same thing as 7659 is, essentially, because China is a lawless land of piracy and copyright infringement. The reason why you, sitting at your computer desk in a place that isn’t China, can’t obtain and distribute signed apps like Kuaiyong is because you don’t have a legal business signed up for the bulk enterprise license. If you did have a legal business set up for that, you could technically make your own version of 7659.

Think of it like a Netflix account. You’re not supposed to give your Netflix account out to all of your friends, but you certainly can, and they can watch Netflix so long as your account doesn’t have too many registered devices.

The site offers apps for free that would otherwise cost money, including big-name titles like Final Fantasy V, which is normally priced at $15.99. Kuaiyong claims that the reason it launched the “store” is to provide Chinese Apple users with something of an App Store trial, as the Chinese market is supposedly so unfamiliar with operating Apple’s App Store that everyone needs a free App Store with which to practice. Not the most solid justification.

Of course, Apple will be looking into shutting down the piracy shop. If it still isn’t aware of 7659 after the internet’s recent coverage, just looking at the developer licenses floating around in its database should ring some bells whenever it sees the massive amount of licensing signatures attached to signed apps from just one company. Considering the pirated apps are installed on legitimate Apple devices, the company will need to find a delicate solution that doesn’t suddenly cut off all of the legal, non-jailbroken devices. It would be surprising if Apple didn’t revoke the enterprise license of Kuaiyong. Perhaps Apple should just make a simple Chinese language App Store tutorial, then wait to see what Kuaiyong’s new excuse for the store’s existence will be.

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Harry_Wild

Apple cannot say anything but to apologize for the poor customer service in the Chinese market place. They are certainly not going to say a word to the Chinese about these apps since they want to sell iPhones and iPads.

Marrach

And considering that it is safe to assume that NO CHINESE TECH Business does ANYTHING without the say-so or watchful eye of the Chinese Security agencies….

…you would open up your legendarily ‘Apple-Safe’ phone to a Chinese App?

7659 make for all users, easy service for happy. Once installed, all enterprise apps convenient and freely, on many iOS device.

jj

Lol. Epic

VirtualMark

Who says I wouldn’t download a bear? If I could, it would be pretty interesting!

Neon Frank

A beer would be more fun

VirtualMark

Lol nice idea! And a Playboy model or two.

I seriously hope they make replicators while I’m alive

Neon Frank

Me as well.
You know we didn’t damn well see all the things that were available in Star Trek lol!

Neon Frank

Where are the feds? A woman downloads 24 songs and gets fisted while China does what it pleases.

sunsmasher

“Thanks to a Chinese piracy site, though, you can now obtain pirated apps on your device without needing to jailbreak.”
So now extremetech is suggesting illegal behavior and stealing apps?
What is wrong with you people? Have you no shame?

Kyle

Shame is bowing down to a government that drops bombs on children, shame is sitting, eating all the big macs one can get your hands on, while watching CNN show these bombs being dropped on children and then sitting back and saying, “Hell yeh, that was justified.” Who do you Americans think you are? The world does not have to bow down to your paradigm of thought? And who says Capitalism and this rotten self serving legal system you created is the begin and end all of human conscience? Nonsense, I will do just what I like with the hardware I paid for and if apple wants to do right by the developers who actually promote their hardware and keep them in business, they can bloody well pay them, I paid enough for the device already thank you very much. And, no, I don’t feel ashamed for taking knowledge that existed before it was conceived in reality. Oh yes, reap the whirl wind, 100 years, made in America, no thanks I prefer dry land.

m0r1arty

Apple users; the bane of any tech site’s existence. Ready for the influx of “My iPad’s got a virus, what do I do?” threads.

lywell

Oh, it’s not a strange thing. Copyright protection is not strict in China. All of the Chinese people are using pirated goods including books, DVD, app….. So, you know it can’t be prevented in a few days.

Kyle

So you reckon China is a lawless land of piracy and copyright infringement? Ha ha ha, yeh, typical Western propaganda hogwash. So the world is allowed to remain free as long as the everyone is bowing down to Strict controls and limitations of what is actual free knowledge? B.S. I hope you know that if China had to cash in all it’s U.S bonds and the debt which U.S owes them, that land you see as being law abiding will very quickly start figuring out ways to return to it’s very own principles of freedom and human dignity? I mean, really, if the U.S bombs someone it is called a just cause. If a U.S corporation uses child labor in 3rd world countries, oh, the media very quickly glosses over this inconvenient fact.

You know, I would actually go as far as to say China is in fact more akin with the paradigm of freedom than the West being controlled by gestapo tactics and fear propaganda. The simple reason why Apple calls those knowledge seekers, ‘pirates’, is because they seek to demonize what they cannot control. This is the exact opposite of what your founding fathers held as firm grounding in principal and self evident ethos.

Now, just imagine this, imagine a world in which, even though we paid a heavily overpriced ransom for our hardware, these massive tight sphinctered corporations actually used some of those vast sums of Capital to pay software developers, of which, there would be more than enough Capital to go around? Imagine then that these users loved apple so much for placing their ease of work and device usability at the forefront of their concern instead of playing policemen and greedy pig with every second key you press on the iOS device? How much more would people then be willing to spend on these devices? But, instead, even once you purchase an app at some ridiculous price the average Joe would never even think of wasting that amount, even then, one needs to make ‘in-app’ purchases. All the while having to input some stupid I.D, gain access to some highly monitored iTunes store, just so you can read an email that you saved in your inbox a couple of weeks ago. Pathetic and sickening. I firmly believe that ultimate power corrupts completely, and that is what I see happening in the large companies of the U.S, being in turn, controlled by the NSA and CIA, and a few which I will not mention here for obvious reasons.

It is in fact the Apple corporation that should be called the ‘Pirates’, stealing your freedom from you through carefully designed and manipulative systems, designed to make you, their slave. And, yes, I have a choice to buy the device or not, and yes, thank goodness, the Chinese have also given us the choice, to be caught up in a wicked cycle of greed or live free and enjoy our devices for what they where created to do, MAKE OUR LIVES EASIER. Thank you China.

HotPot

That. Was. Beautiful.

Gai.181

Wonderfully put. Anyone who disagrees is either a shill or JIDF.

This app may have been taken down, but more have replaced it, thankfully. You’ll never take our freedums!!!!1

Dildo Faggins

You got Dildo Faggins vote

Nightmare-Rex

ehh no installation of “Chinese apps” do you not realize the whole fucking device is made in china, and that they only cost apple 30$ to make and they charge you 600 fucking $? therefore ALL “stock apps” ARE Chinese apps.

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